WATCH PRICE INCREASES EXPLAINED & They will only get more expensive 

Reverso Duoface £8000 in Jan 2022 year later £11400. 42% increase. It's gone from a grail to not even being considered

I think the whole concept of "watch collecting" has drastically changed during the past ten years or so. Until then, "watch collectors" were an absolutely niche group of more or less wealthy nerds with a specialty interest in mostly vintage watches, who saw themselves as custodians of an ancient craft and tradition that most people didn't care about. Other people just owned one watch. Or two. Or maybe three. But they wouldn't see themselves as "collectors". With the advent of watch RU-vid and internet forums, collecting watches has become a hobby for an incredibly large number of people, but it now basically means "buying whatever the industry throws at you in any given year", it is now simply a rarefied form of consumerism. And the luxury watch industry is obviously loving it. In this climate of broad interest in watches (whether as status symbols or as time capsules or whatever you want to see in those little machines), we consumers are willing to pay ludicrous premiums in order to become members of the club. And this trend will go on for as long as people are willing to play the game.

There is a single reason why these watches are priced so high: people continue to pay the high price. I guarantee you that if nobody was willing to pay the asking price for luxury watches, the prices would fall. They would simply have to. For luxury items, sellers don't set prices; buyers do.

This may sound cynical, but it's also simply realistic: a big reason luxury brands (be it watches or anything else) have been raising prices is because they realized that they can. Watches are a great example, and here in America over the past two years we've also seen it happening in theme parks and resorts. Middle-class indulgences that were once attainable with some effort (buying mom or dad a Rolex for their 50th birthday, or taking the family to Disney World for a week) are not even options anymore for anyone outside the top 25-30% of income levels. Luxury markets are seeing how much money these upper-crust households really have, and are experimenting to find out how much they're willing to spend. Rolex spent the last four years watching people pay $25k+ for a watch they sold for $10k, so it's no surprise that they've decided to keep another $4500 or so for themselves. Once Disney realized that they could charge $150 per day to get into DisneyWorld, there was no reason for them to keep the prices at $100. Does this mean that the vast majority of families in America will never go to DisneyWorld? Yes. Does Disney care? No. The same thing is happening with hotels and resorts. I'm not going to dig into what this says about society or class warfare (at least not right now) but the prevailing attitude of "we're charging more because we can" is undeniable.

One of my hobbies is collecting vintage fountain pens. A friend onced asked what does a particur pen cost? I told him it costs as much as someone is willing to pay for it. And I think that pretty much sums it up. I remember when Seiko started boosting the price of their once affordable entry level mechanical divers and reading all the complaints online about that move. But the reality was Seiko fans would still line up and spend their hard earned money on what they knew and complained about was over pricing and Seiko also knew their fans would still pay for the privilege of buying their now overpriced entry level divers. Prices will continue to go up until such time people stop paying.

Paying more for artistry is perfectly understandable. Paying more for no hand finishing , less hand finishing and watches where you can see where they cut corners is trash. All that money goes straight to executives and more advertising instead of the art of watchmaking.

I just got a Cartier. Photos and videos don't do that watch justice. You can see the quality, workmanship, elegance

I get that raw material prices have gone up, but when you factor in that most watches weigh between 80 and 150 gm it's taking the piss a bit.

Hey Britt, don't know if you read old comments, so I am posting this here, even if it is off topic 🙂 In case you didnt know, previous steel, yellow gold, and two-tone Daytonas (38.6mm) had a different, asymmetrical case shape and were 1 mm smaller than rose gold, white gold, and platinum daytonas (39.6). So, the name "40 mm" actually comes from the size of these precious metal versions. Now with the new 2023 model, ALL models have adopted the same larger, symmetrical case, with the flat-bottomed lugs.

The price increase of luxury goods is just stupid sometimes, regardless if you can afford it or not. It almost seems like the top brands take advantage of the fact that there are a lot of people with cray amounts of money. It makes it almost impossible for someone saving 2 years to get a bit of money to buy a nice watch. And yes there are more important things than to complain about watch prices but we are here because we like watches 😬 Keep up the good work and a speedy recovery 💪🏻

Great analysis here - to prove you right, I just bought a BB58 Blue from a guy selling it used. When I met him, he said “I have a confession to make. My wife got me an Apple Watch ultra. It’s now the only watch I wear and I’m selling off my collection of mechanical watches.”

A Lange & Sohne put their prices up by 13.5 % on March 20th , AD sent me a message telling me so , the only way to avoid it was to pay for the watch in full and you will secure pre increase price, the zeitwerk went from £88.300.00 to £101.900.00 , it’s very difficult to get your head round such a big increase in the currant climate 😮

I’ve been watching review of the Aqua terra as I was considering one over the next year or so. Crazy that the stated prices in the reviews are so much cheaper than current retail.

This is great information! Thanks for sharing the Morgan Stanley report. I’ve never heard of this before.

Guess what… I am done buying any more watches. I will keep enjoying the hobby reading, watching, and talking about it but that’s it. Those luxury brands can do whatever they want - target higher income tiers, younger YOLO generations and whatnot. At some point, they will be so far out unreachable, become fairy tales and forgotten eventually.

Tudor were decent bargains but not so much now. Omega are super aggressively punching ever upwards and the new IWC Engineer is good but the price they are asking is a massive hike over what it’s really worth. I guess now more than ever people are appreciating what they already have rather than lusting over the over priced hyped stuff.

We’ve talked flexing before but as prices increase the flex gets bigger. Mechanical watches are no longer the best tool for the job. They are a piece of jewelry which we all know are priced at what people are willing to pay.

The Swiss manufacturers can raise unit prices to meet supply and demand. However, there will be a price point when an upper middle class collector will look elsewhere to collect more affordable watches. It all comes down to what is a wrist watch worth to you individually.

The outrageous price hikes of a reverso really has put me off saving for one. Cartier Tank comes in it’s place.

Thanks Brittney for all your great content. For us real collectors there is little watch content on youtube since the watch hype has died down, you keep us enthusiastic. We can probably see the real state of the used watch market as less videos are being uploaded, is this caused by less people viewing? I imagine so but for sure we will see who the real collectors are. I hope your recovery is a speedy one. Best wishes to you and James.

Great video! Please review the Christopher Ward 300! CW had a small price increase recently.

Cartier up as well. $2500 AUD more for a medium santos from when I bought one a year ago.

I bought a Tag Heuer F1 Gulf in 2019, RRP was £1350 and I paid just £1100 for it from an AD. The "new" F1 Gulf has just been launched with an RRP of £2050! I think you're right Britt, there is a definite push to move watches upmarket and other manufacturers have seen what a lack of availability has done for Rolex so are now positioning themselves for a slice of those profit. Maybe I'll have to go back to buying G-Shocks...

Luxury items have a different price curve compared to other items. When it comes to i.e. groceries, if the prices are too high people stop buying or buy less. When it comes to luxury items, the higher the price, the more people want them due to the higher perceived exclusivity, status and unattainableness. It's human nature to want to compare against others. Let's face it, nobody needs a luxury watch for 10k, nobody needs a luxury handbag for 5-10k but companies charge those prices because people are willing to pay those prices. Companies charge as much as they can get away with and as much as people are willing to pay.

That’s part of the strategy of the new era of watchworld: Mechanical watches are just a status symbol now.

Oligopoly may be the word you were looking for - a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Close enough!

I own 6 Seiko 5, I'm all set.🗿

Britt. Inflation is not at 2%. I wish it was. Average European inflation is running at 10% with some EU nations experience over 20%. Manufacturing is suffering in particular. My own business is design and manufacture of high quality food and chemical processing equipment. The huge increase in energy costs, self inflicted unfortunately by our governments who are members of the Church of Climate Change. Making anything costs money. If your energy costs increase by 50% prices will go up. Even transporting and delivering what you make is far more expensive than before. We all do our best to cut costs, but the point comes when you have to pass on those costs to the consumer. That nice stainless steel watch case, that sapphire crystal for example, the manufacturing of those from raw materials mined in the earth to smelting, machining, finishing, assembly has increased substantially in energy costs. Not defending companies like Rolex who make $10,000 on a watch that cost $1,500 to make. However the margins are much smaller for the lower and middle priced market. Grand Seiko might for example make a watch for $1,500 but sell it for $4,000 to cover costs and make a profit. Other companies margins are even smaller so they depend on high unit sales to survive, but even they have to pay higher energy and wage costs as a result of inflation. It's unfortunate, but what can we do?

What a great video and the links were very interesting. Thank you for all the hours you spent doing research. I learned a great deal. Hope you are feeling better with each passing day

Remember when seamasters were 2500?! Lol that was awesome. I thought it was so expensive too.

It depends on where the equilibrium point of price vs demand is. Main difficulty of this prediction is we won’t know how quickly this equilibrium point is reached. It’s highly dependent on economic factors/conditions.

I for one will not play the game of ever increasing prices, and if the Swiss watch industry go the way of the dodo, so be it. They are taking watch enthusiasts for granted, we have the Rolex Ads to contend with, and now the other minor Swiss brands are jumping on the wagon. We are mugs we pay for an item we cannot wear, only behind closed doors for fear of being mugged, and now the manufacturers are mugging us.

Good video. Would say though that "because they can" is also a big contributor. Fact is - if you used to have a sh$$ ton of watches at affordable prices that flooded the secondary market and destroyed the price and then moved to a model where you basically only produce what you can sell - then price can go up as long as you can keep up with demand....

One of my dad’s favorite expressions: “whatever the traffic will bear.” If someone is willing to pay it, the seller will charge it. I think we all need to find and support a really excellent watch service person in order to buy fewer and let the watch market return to reality. Your Richard Mille citation is the key and another of my dad’s cliches: “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

On one hand this puts me off watches and makes me want to walk away, because I don’t want to play ball. On the other hand, I look at my rent and realize that in 2 years it has gone up 50%. I look at my groceries over the last 2 years and they have gone up about 30-40%. So the prices of the watches I look at it seem to be in line with the crippling cost of living increases over the last couple of years, the starting price point is just a lot higher and therefore we see $300 increase instead of $0.20 increase (or shrinkflation where we see no change in price), and that is harder to stomach.

Watches, photography gear, road/mtb bikes. They are milking us like there is no tomorrow. Now having a hobby is considered luxury... At least when it comes to bikes, demand fell off this year becouse that stupid over-inflated prices and now we can see clearances across market, also it seems that prices won't go up this year. I've used to buy watches at AD's, but no way with that prices. Recently bought lovely Doxa sub200 for 60% mrsp in secondary market and don't feel like I lost something.

A big part of a luxury product's appeal is its price. It's a flex, look I can afford this so I'm successful and companies know this. The selling price is many many multiples if the manufacturing cost.

Well I guess it’s good news for the hit I take on Tudors when I buy them as RRP goes up the preowned market goes up.

Hi chica!!! You look great! Healing up nicely. So glad to see you on the mend. Here’s my small take on the luxury watch market. I think you are spot on with your observations. The biggest issue I can see happening in the future is a crash in prices. Watches are “novelties” and since they’ve classified themselves as luxury and are now looked at as “investments” this has all the makings for a huge crash. Hear me out: A) every year these companies have to sell more watches. Even in limited numbers at higher prices, when you factor the total global supply number they’ve made, from inception, the numbers of high prices items versus potential buying pool will hit a breaking point. This is true of all bubbles and historically many collectibles have hit speculative bubbles before. But, when you look at those collectibles (say comics or a similar limited quantity item) many of those had a truly fixed “limited” supply. And yet when they ran out of buyers to continue the high priced speculative trend, suddenly there was more product than people willing to purchase. It was like a game of musical chairs. We haven’t gotten to a point where the music has stopped but it will. Rolex makes something like a million watches a year? At least that’s the current tale. Can you imagine if people decided to just pass on Rolex a few years (maybe due to a economic downturn or a cultural shift away from watches as a desired item? That alone could basically kill the whole market. If a company like Rolex couldn’t hold their value and increase, the subjective idea that all other brands (better or lesser) could hold theirs, would just fall away. I’m not saying that watches will go the way of the dodo, but I have a feeling that we are in a bubble and a crisis similar to the quartz but worse, may happen. And prices for everything but vintage and truly limited items, will just not hold the values we see now. (Vintage items just being classically rare to begin with as they had smaller numbers, less have survived and often patina and wear, is so specific as to give each individual piece its own unique charm).

One by one as the financial elastic snap’s people will walk away from collecting and enjoying high end watches. It feels unfair and by now I would have normally bought another watch but it’s all leaving a sour taste in the mouth so I won’t bother. Secondary values are also going down especially with Tudor as they play the next big thing card every year resulting in watches you can’t get for a few months followed by quality issues and then hundreds on EBay for huge discounts 🤦🏻‍♂️

Same happened to GPUs because the second hand market(scalpers) showed companies you can charge multiples of the MSRP. Anyway, it will end badly in a couple of years for the whole market. At best they are going to see stagnation in sales, more realistically, after the boom/excitement dies off, we are going to experience a collapse in the market. EDIT: Also companies trying to pull out the "supply chain issues" argument in 2023 is either complete bs or speaks of total incompetence.

I have an Rolex price list from 2001. Adjusted for inflation a submariner is £3,000 as opposed to the close to £10,000. I cite Rolex because they’re they cause. Around the same time (and kicked off in 2006) Rolex pivoted from a tool watch company to a luxury company (2006 is a the year they transitioned to solid link bracelets and ceramic bezels) And the phrase “a high tide floats all boats”. Everyone else raised their prices because they can. 20-30% price hikes between 2007-2009 wasn’t due to the economic crash. All it’s taken is other brands to try to catch up to Rolex. Frankly I don’t think others could because they didn’t have the cache or name to do it. But as Rolex, AP, Patek etc become more and more unobtainium people look to others (rightly or wrongly) and they decide they can pump it up. I’m not entirely sure that smart watches are hurting the mechanical watch industry (well, any above around £1,000). Fundamentally, prices are going up because they can. Watch collectors are idiots (I count myself in that) and companies will slightly tweak a dial or a colour and we’ll lap it up. Ps: omega fanboys, stop being in denial that you’ve picked the wrong horse 😂😂😂

For the rich, there are luxury watches. For the rest, there’s Ali Express!

Major watch brands see scalpers scalping and they had a meeting; “…if scalpers can sell at profiteering prices, we need to get ourselves a bigger slice of that cash…ka-ching! We don’t need watch enthusiasts if we can sell our stainless steel watches for 30 times, rather than just 20 times, the actual cost of making them to people with more money than knowledge, and it means we can spend more time on our yachts! Let’s do it!” 🤔 😆😂🤣

What’s interesting is that, excluding certain Rolex, Patek, AP and assorted high-demand models, demand and secondary market prices are softening. Raising MSRP can’t really be walked back. Do they really want to go so aggressive into a softening market? I’m glad I’ve been at this more than a decade and don’t really feel much need to grow my collection.

It's coz we showed them that we're wiling to pay more than they charge. You didn't think the bubble was gonna go unnoticed by the brands?

'Broken Jaw Owner' hilarious! Recovery looking good britt! Loved the video. I am in the watch industry and it is a pain seeing these brands increase around 1-3 times per year, between 2-10% each time. I can feel a huge wave of sub £1000 or sub £500 watches being the highlight of this year, example being Tissot PRX, Seiko Prospex etc.

What a time to be alive!? I think I quit in 2021. Watch prices have been r slurred lately. I already got most of the watches I want, and not interested in resale bull shit.

I sprung for one of the new Seiko 1960s reinterpretations against my better judgement. The AD gave me a good deal, and I must admit that I can see the quality boost from the lower-cost Seiko watches. Feeling a little guilty, I took the original cost of the Seiko 6105-8000 and used an app to adjust that cost for inflation, and the price was pretty close to what I paid. And I’m happy with the watch. That being said, I’m not buying any more watches. My dad lived through the Great Depression and fought in WWII. He wore a Army issued ORD watch in combat and a Timex in civilian life. He did wear a Seiko quartz I gave him but bristled when I told him I paid $120 for it. If he knew what I paid for that Seiko reinterpretation, he would haunt me from the grave and likely lecture me about frivolously spending money. That alone has cured my desire for more watches. I’ll watch videos, read blogs about watches, but I made choice, and for better or worse, this watch will need to last for a long, long time. Great video.

Just saw the price of Sinn on Watchbuys here in the U.S... Yikes

Britt, great vid! I'm curious about whether the never-ending price hikes go across all brands in the various watch groups (Swatch Group, LVMH, Richemont, Kering, etc.), or is it mostly their high end brands? Each group is in effect its own oligarchy...and oligarchies tend to like and copy other oligarchies, lol.

Part of this has to be manufacturers looking at the grey / used market price for their watches and deciding that they want a piece of that action. Why would you sell a watch for $12,000 when it trades on the secondary market for $18,000? Why would you leave $6000 on the table? Think about houses. Imagine if a slightly used house was selling for 40% more than the brand new build house next-door? Of course that would never happen. Because the guy selling the new build house would simply adjust his price to market. And I think that luxury watchmakers are trying to do the same thing. Maybe not all in one jump, but they are doing it.

It's good to see on the mend, here's to a complete and speedy recovery.

I have never seen more interest and demand in mechanical watches and the number of watch related channels (yours included) is a prime example. The top watch brands have exploited this demand by consistently increasing MSRP. I don't see the interest and demand in mechanical watches dying off anytime soon but the increases in MSRP are not sustainable. This is a great opportunity for less prestigious brands and micro brands to take advantage of the demand by offering quality built and designed watches at a more affordable price point. Should be interesting to see where the market will be this time next year. My prediction is interest and demand in mechanical watches will continue to be strong and MSRP increases will stabilize. Or I could be totally wrong!

Good morning !! Not a single Rolex available at AD in Victoria or Vancouver BC Canada. Thank you for this video.

Does this make the market for goods/services like a ratcheting unidirectional dive-time bezel?

IWC is going nuts with price increases. Pilot's Chronograph 41 on leather strap was $6500 in Jan 22 and was raised to $7600 in less than a year.

My Reverso steel mono medium small seconds on black alligator £5850 in March 2022 from Wempe Bond Street to £8600 today. Phew…😂

I agree and it is quite sad and disheartening.. Like the wealth gap in society at large- it creates a ‘spending gap’ in the watch enthusiast community. Bummer

Yet grey market watch dealers still try to tell you that £12K is all they can give you for that ‘Pepsi’ or ‘Hulk’ - they are worse than used car salesmen in the 70s!!

Every time we blink it seems there are huge price increases in higher end Swiss watches . Actually find it embarrassing how quick they seem to look to fleece the consumer … speaking to a lot of watch enthusiasts who are saying they are looking to get out as they don’t want to encourage the greed .. very top tier may be fine with this game the rest beware , companies like omega and similar priced brands may well price themselves out of the market and massively contribute to their own demise .. it really is up to the consumer to react , if we continue to let them take the piss they ain’t going to stop

I bought a JLC Reverso medium thin monoface last October and two months later it was $1k more expensive. Really glad I pulled the trigger when I did!

I got my original Rollex Submarrinor from my AD “Snake” for €129 - an insane €19 increase!

This is the reason why I stopped collecting. Watch collecting as a hobby is totally dead to me which is sad.

I've noticed a mega hike with omega watches recently.. no doubt they'll blame Putin

It sucks when even Seikos are pushing on the $1,000 USD price. I might as well hold off in the Seiko and save up a little more for a GS.

Hi Brit, just found your channel and loving your content. Always a Rolex fan but just bought large blue faced Santos - quite a Bobby Dazzler.

Thank you for not singing to the patrons!! Excellent video.hope you are getting better each day!

You make some excellent comments here. As an aside, I enjoy this style of discourse videos much more than reviews as you offer more originality. Anyway, the point I want to add is that the second hand market has made it well and truely clear to the brands that people are willing to pay much higher prices for their goods than the listed MSRP. So can you blame them for wanting a piece of the pie? Yes inflation is a factor but some of these price hikes are crazy. I had been contemplating buying a Lange a year ago but the recent price hikes has now priced me out of that market.

Sometime in 2011-2012 I got possessed by demons of boredom and started buying (just buying, not necessarily collecting) vintage, pre-quartz crisis Swiss watches. Old Eternas, Hamiltons, Certinas, Omax/Vialux etc. In 2020 I started selling most of accumulated items retaining only those I wanted in my collection. I've made aprrox. 300% profit on this whole operation. Cool. On the other hand if at the same time I've invested in Bitcoin I would make 22900.00% profit If I sold it at the peak of its price. Hell, even Apple stock would bring me almost 2500%! Appears to be, Britt that mechanical watches (just like most of commodities) are far from being an effective investment tool.

The industry knows what they can ask, and they do just that… unfortunately… but also higher cost is involved.. The inflation was more than 10% for months in the Netherlands….

I laughed out loud when I saw the price of the new Iwc ingeneur.Just add a useful trending buzzword,”genta” and triple the price.I suddenly awoke from my 25 year obsession with watch collecting and bought a cheap Casio which I love.The internet and especially RU-vid has driven a lust in people like myself( obsessives) which has its audience hooked on hype and desire.Just remember that 2 weeks after getting your grail watch to end all grail watches you’ll be back on the internet looking for your next fix. Don’t do it!

Also one of the reasons of the prices rising are the video creators. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy that I can see watches content, company they know that your followers are watches enthusiast/collectors and all of you talking about the new release can create the hype. Like now with the Zulu GMT 39mm that everyone is talking about, they announced the release on summer this mean the so many people are start to saving money for buying that watch (I’m one of those 😅) and in the moment when touch the market is going to have a big push on sales. Prior to all RU-vid etc, we might discover from a friend or from an ad about this release, maybe after months from the release on the market, and I would take us month to pull the trigger on that particular watch, that in the meantime was sitting for months unsold in the shelves and for that put on big sales.

Greed is alive and working... Thanx Britt , looking and sounding great. 🥃

Another superb video Britt ! 👏Love your style and also that you get all forensic about the data… it’s the only way to do it. 🙌 Separately, I finished recording my latest video about my own Saxonia thin over the weekend (to release this on Friday) and I touch on the price increases at Lange too. It’s the same 35% increase for both my Saxonia Thin and also my Lange 1, both of which I purchased within the last two and a half years. I was shocked to see the increases and it made me wonder whether I would pay these prices today… Keep up the good work. And thank you 👊

Just googled Seiko Epson profits for 2022, net income $0.755 billion up 170.13% from 2021 year before nearly 300% increase and 2019 85% decline. Although not all from watches, but they have invested a lot in new models.

My take is price hikes are happening in a controlled manner to keep the secondary market alive. Let's face it, not many watch buyers would like to see 30-40% reduce in value in their watches after leaving AD. Average buyers will be more willing to buy more expensive watches knowing they could later liquidate if the need arises. Higher RRP also create FOMO and attracts alternative investors and speculators to jump on the bandwagon. Watches collecting is not limited to watch enthusiasists.

Hi Brit, glad you're on the mend. Hope to see you and James soon.

Was thrilled to see you hop up and grab that card. That new hip is really healing up. It’s a titanium timeless classic and you wear it with flair.

IMO Seiko's kinda screwing up jacking the prices on their lower end automatics. It's getting to the point where you can get a watch from Aliexpress with better QC and the exact same movement for half the price. An SRPD shouldn't be 300 USD and still have bezel/chapter ring issues when you can get an almost identical Steeldive for 120 USD that also has Sapphire. There's a reason my collection is Casio/Timex and chinese brands primarily, with the only Seiko being the new solar Arnie since nobody else makes one of those.

Thanks for that information Britt. Very interesting. I had been looking for a dual or triple time zone watch for over a year before finding out they are called GMT watches. The price of famous reputable brands all seemed to be in the thousands (GBP). Then I discovered smaller manufacturers here in the UK and then, to my delight, a local Scottish micro brand, Marloe, incorporating a relatively new Japanese automatic mechanical movement. Their GMT is attractively priced and nicely designed and I am now enjoying owning and using their product. Thanks again.

Hey Britt! After spending the last year believing I wanted a Santos or Tank, the Ballon Bleu 42 steel won me over as my first watch. The BB is the opposite of SDC. Amazing layered dial and reserved case vs this plain dial and extravagant case. Not the popular choice but the versatile and personal one.

Thank you, for making this video despite the pain and healing you are going through. Happy to see you are doing better. You are tougher than you think.

A fool and his money are soon parted. My father paid 300 bucks for a Rolex day date in the early 70’s and he thought he got shafted. 😂

Oligopoly is probably the best word. Great video!

Great information,Brittany! Very informative video. I’m glad you’re healing up well. Keep the wonderful content coming.

I’d suggest material costs are negligible. I think the biggest reason prices are going higher is that people are happy to pay these prices. People are getting wealthier and need something to waste there money on. It would be crazy for Rolex to keep selling their watches at a discount to market value and they are dragging the market up with them.

I think that you’re right when you said that is a new quartz crisis. During covid the demand for watches went up (for different reason) on the same moment production was stopped. And Rolex and AP or Patek prices skyrocketed give the impression that watches are an investment, but even Omega, GS, or any others brands once buy they prices went down. Brand like Longines or Oris that they doubled up their price in the desperate attempt to reposition them in the market are on the edge of failing. If Longines wasn’t on the Swatch group was already out of market, because is a brand for watches lovers but is not mainstream and before was a very good money value for the 2/3k range.

I am guessing that the reason for this is that the most prolific customer for these companies has the money to spend on these watches. When Rolex or Tudorr are designing watches, I am certain they are not imagining the average middle class working family. They imagine someone with the requisite disposable income.

It's working... in the short term. Once the nouveau riche have their 20th daytona they'll lose interest. Meanwhile all the people that these luxury brands have priced out won't be interested anymore and it'll be back to 40/50% discounts. For me I have two watches on waitlist and once those have been received I'm done. I'm never going to pay 10k for a Tudor or 20k for an IWC.

Le Culte de Cat-Yay. Sad to have found out in another video's comments that the Solar Beat Must is no more. I was hoping they'd eventually release it with a steel bracelet.

A couple of years ago I bought a seiko snk803 for £110 the same shop in now charging £200 its still got a 7S26 in it so I guess its just been stored somewhere. I have been looking at Omega for a few years and havent seen one I like, now there is an Aqua Terra with a nice dial (the ploughed field dials are what put me off buying up to now) but the price has gone up so much that although I could afford it I'm not going to buy. I can't ever see me buying another Rolex, I have had mine quite a while and although it was the most expensive watch I'd bought it was nothing like the cost they are now in real terms.

I paid £5600 retail for a JLC Reverso in Dec 21. Same watch now at £8,800. Mental.

Prices are increasing to this degree for only one reason; almost all watch brands are owned by conglomerates which answer to shareholders. If a brand does not bring year on year increase in dividends, the share price drops. There are only two ways to achieve year on year dividend increase: reduce costs and up prices. Rolex is the outlier because it’s the only company whose product price is driven by supply & demand.

Much like you, I'm not a believer in paying over MSRP. However, more recently I've been thinking about a 116503 on the grey Market. I had pulled the trigger before now (albeit not at the peak), the price i overpaid would now be under the current MSRP of the equivalent model. If we were to say itll take 20 yrs to get a 126500 with no spend history, then the MSRP will double (at least in that time) using your money now to buy the watch you want now, not only gives you the enjoyment now, but also helps you beat inflation in the long run. Just a thought - I think I'm still firmly in the "dont pay over retail" camp

Great video as usual. It seems like everything continues to go up, so why wouldn’t watches be any different😢. It’s great to see you back to your usual self, informative, and funny! Ironically, not only have the prices gone up but getting so many of these brands, especially those in the top five, has Increasingly been more difficult.

Great video as always! Will also add that GBP has depreciated in the last few years and the price increase for watches in the US in USD, though still high, is lower than the UK

Supply chain my ass. Year over year the gross profit of Richemont has risen from 45 to 57 to now 62%. They literally make billions of profits in the luxury houses. As Ranger Smith said: These prices go where they go because people pay what is asked. But not necessarily everywhere. The Nomos Ahoi Neomatik Atlantic, bless them, has gone up 290 Euros in list price since 2017. That's less than 50 bucks per year. For in house horology. They don't seem to pointlessly gauge prices. Cartier? Has grown beyond what it's worth for sure, even though I'm an owner, I wouldn't get a Santos today. I paid 1000 bucks less a year ago, and that was a stretch already.

Bought a SS and gold Rolex Datejust twenty years ago from an AD. I was given 10% off plus no sales tax. I still own and wear that watch every day. Back then, it was pretty easy to get a SS Rolex sports model (excluding the Daytona) from an AD. No discount thought. List.

Just saw the Longines Avigation Titanium BigEye listed for $3,850. I was able to land a brand new one for $2,700, but jeez... what a price hike from even before when it was listed at $3,225!